Listening Comprehension Tips

Pre-Writing: Planning

1. Read the questions carefully to understand what you are being asked to do.
2. Listen actively. Keep your purpose for listening in mind by referring to questions.
3. During the first reading jot down notes on significant devices of the passage based on the questions.
4. During the second reading, check to see if your jottings from the first reading are supported by the entire passage.
5. Give the answer the question asks for.
6. Write your answers in complete sentences
7. Use your summary writing skills. A long answer is not necessarily a better answer.

Writing

1. A main idea should not be a purpose. It should read:

"The main idea of the passage is that..." NOT "The main idea of the passage is to tell..."

2. When commenting on the effectiveness of a device used by the writer, you are to tell how the use of the device helps the writer to achieve his purpose for writing. 

Weak Answer: "The writer uses a metaphor to describe the beauty of the sunset and how night fell." or "The writer uses a metaphor to bring his point across."

Better Answer: "The writer uses a metaphor to convey his admiration for the magnificent sunset and to show how suddenly night fell upon the landscape."

Post-Writing

1. Check your responses against the questions on the exam to ensure that you have answered all the parts of each question with exactly what has been asked.
2. Edit your work to get rid of grammatical errors, expression errors and unclear sentences.

Good Luck!

Linguistic Features of Jamaican Creole (Patois)

MODULE TWO (2) : LANGUAGE & COMMUNITY
Jamaican Creole is considered a language like any other for two basic reasons:
 1. It possesses the characteristic features of a language AND 2. It performs the functions of a language.      

Below is a brief outline of some of these linguistic features:

PHONOLOGY: the sound system of a language. Patois has a sound system independent of English.

• Jamaican Creole does not use the 'th' sound but substitutes with two other sounds: the 't' sounds as in 'tik' for the English 'thick' and the 'd' sounds as in 'dem' for the English 'them'.
• Jamaican Creole does not pronounce the 'h' sound at the beginning of English words. Therefore English 'hour' becomes 'our'. Similarly there is the tendency to hyper-correct and pronounce the 'h' sound at the beginning of words that do not require it, therefore English 'egg' becomes 'hegg' and 'exam' becomes 'hexam' and so on.

LEXICON: the vocabulary of a language. Although the lexical items of Patois are English based, many are used in non-English ways.

• Some Patois words that appear to be similar to English words do not carry the same meaning, e.g. 'Ignorant' in Patois means easily angered, very upset and not lacking knowledge (which is the English definition). Another example is 'Belly' that in patois can refer to pregnancy.
• Some English words are compounded to create nouns not present in English for example 'Foot bottom' for the sole of the feet and 'Eye water' for tears. 
• Some Creole words are formed by reduplication (base words are repeated to form new words). For example friedi friedi to mean fearful or timid, chati chati to mean talks excessively or out of turn.
• Some Creole words are adopted from other non-English languages, eg, maroon-Spanish, pikni-Portuguese, unu, (you plural) -Igbo

GRAMMAR: rules governing the correct use of language

• Pluralization is signaled by the addition of the 'dem' after the noun eg. The people dem. Or to emphasize the numerical marker- 'de two book dem'.
• Possession is not signaled, as in English, with the apostrophe 's' suffix but by the word 'fi' as in 'A fi mi handout'
• Zero Copular construction. A Copular links the subject to the predicate. It is derived from the verb 'to be'. Creole can have a zero copular structure eg. Jane sick for Mary is sick in Englich or Jane de home for Jane is at home.

SYNTAX: the proper agreement of words in a sentence

• Patois mainly uses syntax to highlight certain elements within a sentence while English often uses pronunciation by verbally stressing that which is to be emphasized. For example Creole: Is Susan eat di chicken? versus English Susan ate the chicken? Creole: Is di chicken Susan eat ? versus Susan ate the chicken?